arise and how might you cope with such problems?
4. Growth Rates. Find the sustainable and internal growth rates for a firm with the following
ratios: asset turnover = 1.40; profit margin = 5 percent; payout ratio = 25 percent; equity/as-
sets = .60.
5. Percentage of Sales Models. Percentage of sales models usually assume that costs, fixed as-
sets, and working capital all increase at the same rate as sales. When do you think that these
assumptions do not make sense? Would you feel happier using a percentage of sales model
for short-term or long-term planning?
6. Relationships among Variables. Comebaq Computers is aiming to increase its market share
by slashing the price of its new range of personal computers. Are costs and assets likely to
increase or decrease as a proportion of sales? Explain.
7. Balancing Items. What are the possible choices of balancing items when using a financial
planning model? Discuss whether some are generally preferable to others.
8. Financial Targets. Managers sometimes state a target growth rate for sales or earnings per
share. Do you think that either makes sense as a corporate goal? If not, why do you think
that managers focus on them?

If sales increase by 20 percent in 2001, and the company uses a strict percentage of sales
planning model (meaning that all items on the income and balance sheet also increase by 20
percent), what must be the balancing item? What will be its value?
10. Required External Financing. If the dividend payout ratio in problem 9 is fixed at 50 per-
cent, calculate the required total external financing for growth rates in 2001 of 15 percent,
20 percent, and 25 percent.
11. Feasible Growth Rates. What is the maximum possible growth rate for Planners Peanuts
(see problem 9) if the payout ratio remains at 50 percent and

a. no external debt or equity is to be issued
b. the firm maintains a fixed debt ratio but issues no equity
Financial Planning 103

12. Using Percentage of Sales. Eagle Sports Supply has the following financial statements. As-
sume that EagleÔÇ™s assets are proportional to its sales.

a. Find EagleÔÇ™s required external funds if it maintains a dividend payout ratio of 60 percent
and plans a growth rate of 15 percent in 2001.
b. If Eagle chooses not to issue new shares of stock, what variable must be the balancing
item? What will its value be?
c. Now suppose that the firm plans instead to increase long-term debt only to $1,100 and
does not wish to issue any new shares of stock. Why must the dividend payment now be
the balancing item? What will its value be?

13. Feasible Growth Rates.

a. What is the internal growth rate of Eagle Sports (see problem 12) if the dividend payout
ratio is fixed at 60 percent and the equity-to-asset ratio is fixed at 2Ôü„3?
b. What is the sustainable growth rate?

14. Building Financial Models. How would Executive FruitÔÇ™s financial model change if the
dividend payout ratio were cut to 1Ôü„3? Use the revised model to generate a new financial plan
for 2000 assuming that debt is the balancing item. Show how the financial statements given
in Table 1.16 would change. What would be required external financing?
15. Required External Financing. Executive FruitÔÇ™s financial manager believes that sales in
2000 could rise by as much as 20 percent or by as little as 5 percent.

a. Recalculate the first-stage pro forma financial statements (Table 1.15) under these two
assumptions. How does the rate of growth in revenues affect the firmÔÇ™s need for external
funds?
b. Assume any required external funds will be raised by issuing long-term debt and that any
surplus funds will be used to retire such debt. Prepare the completed (second-stage) pro
forma balance sheet.

16. Building Financial Models. The following tables contain financial statements for Dynasta-
tics Corporation. Although the company has not been growing, it now plans to expand and
will increase net fixed assets (that is, assets net of depreciation) by $200,000 per year for the
next 5 years and forecasts that the ratio of revenues to total assets will remain at 1.50. An-
nual depreciation is 10 percent of net fixed assets at the start of the year. Fixed costs are ex-
pected to remain at $56,000 and variable costs at 80 percent of revenue. The companyÔÇ™s pol-
icy is to pay out two-thirds of net income as dividends and to maintain a book debt ratio of
25 percent of total capital.
104 SECTION ONE

a. Produce a set of financial statements for 2001. Assume that net working capital will equal
50 percent of fixed assets.
b. Now assume that the balancing item is debt, and that no equity is to be issued. Prepare a
completed pro forma balance sheet for 2001. What is the projected debt ratio for 2001?

17. Sustainable Growth. PlankÔÇ™s Plants had net income of $2,000 on sales of $40,000 last year.
The firm paid a dividend of $500. Total assets were $100,000, of which $40,000 was fi-
nanced by debt.

a. What is the firmÔÇ™s sustainable growth rate?
b. If the firm grows at its sustainable growth rate, how much debt will be issued next year?
c. What would be the maximum possible growth rate if the firm did not issue any debt next
year?

18. Sustainable Growth. A firm has decided that its optimal capital structure is 100 percent eq-
uity financed. It perceives its optimal dividend policy to be a 40 percent payout ratio. Asset
turnover is sales/assets = .8, the profit margin is 10 percent, and the firm has a target growth
rate of 5 percent.

a. Is the firmÔÇ™s target growth rate consistent with its other goals?
b. If not, by how much does it need to increase asset turnover to achieve its goals?
c. How much would it need to increase the profit margin instead?

19. Internal Growth. Go Go Industries is growing at 30 percent per year. It is all-equity fi-
nanced and has total assets of $1 million. Its return on equity is 20 percent. Its plowback
ratio is 40 percent.
Financial Planning 105

a. What is the internal growth rate?
b. What is the firmÔÇ™s need for external financing this year?
c. By how much would the firm increase its internal growth rate if it reduced its payout ratio
to zero?
d. By how much would such a move reduce the need for external financing? What do you
conclude about the relationship between dividend policy and requirements for external fi-
nancing?

20. Sustainable Growth. A firmÔÇ™s profit margin is 10 percent and its asset turnover ratio is .5.
It has no debt, has net income of $10 per share, and pays dividends of $4 per share. What is
the sustainable growth rate?
21. Internal Growth. An all-equityÔÇ“financed firm plans to grow at an annual rate of at least 10
percent. Its return on equity is 15 percent. What is the maximum possible dividend payout
rate the firm can maintain without resorting to additional equity issues?
22. Internal Growth. Suppose the firm in the previous question has a debt-equity ratio of 1Ôü„3.
What is the maximum dividend payout ratio it can maintain without resorting to any exter-
nal financing?
23. Internal Growth. A firm has an asset turnover ratio of 2.0. Its plowback ratio is 50 percent,
and it is all-equity financed. What must its profit margin be if it wishes to finance 8 percent
growth using only internally generated funds?
24. Internal Growth. If the profit margin of the firm in the previous problem is 6 percent, what
is the maximum payout ratio that will allow it to grow at 8 percent without resorting to ex-
ternal financing?
25. Internal Growth. If the profit margin of the firm in problem 23 is 6 percent, what is the
maximum possible growth rate that can be sustained without external financing?
26. Using Percentage of Sales. The 2000 financial statements for Growth Industries are pre-
sented below. Sales and costs in 2001 are projected to be 20 percent higher than in 2000.
Both current assets and accounts payable are projected to rise in proportion to sales. The
firm is currently operating at full capacity, so it plans to increase fixed assets in proportion
to sales. What external financing will be required by the firm? Interest expense in 2001 will
equal 10 percent of long-term debt outstanding at the start of the year. The firm will main-
tain a dividend payout ratio of .40.

27. Capacity Use and External Financing. Now suppose that the fixed assets of Growth In-
Challenge dustries (from the previous problem) are operating at only 75 percent of capacity. What is
Problems required external financing over the next year?
28. Capacity Use and External Financing. If Growth Industries from problem 26 is operating
at only 75 percent of capacity, how much can sales grow before the firm will need to raise
any external funds? Assume that once fixed assets are operating at capacity, they will need
to grow thereafter in direct proportion to sales.
29. Internal Growth. For many firms, cash and inventory needs may grow less than propor-
tionally with sales. When we recognize this fact, will the firmÔÇ™s internal growth rate be
higher or lower than the level predicted by the formula
retained earnings
Internal growth rate =
assets

30. Spreadsheet Problem. Use a spreadsheet like that in Figure 1.17 to answer the following
questions about Executive Fruit:

a. What would be required external financing if the growth rate is 15 percent and the divi-
dend payout ratio is 60 percent?
b. Given the assumptions in part (a), what would be the amount of debt and equity issued if
the firm wants to maintain its debt-equity ratio at a level of 2/3?
c. What formulas would you put in cells C23 and C24 of the spreadsheet in Figure 1.17 to
maintain the debt-equity ratio at 2/3, while forcing the balance sheet to balance (that is,
forcing debt + equity = total assets)?

1 The firm cannot issue debt, and its dividend payment is effectively fixed, which limits re-
Solutions to tained earnings to $40. Therefore, the balancing item must be new equity issues. The firm
Self-Test must raise $200 ÔÇ“ $40 = $160 through equity sales in order to finance its plans for $200 in
asset acquisitions.
Questions
2 a. The total amount of external financing is unchanged, since the dividend payout is un-
changed. The $100,000 increase in total assets will now be financed by a mixture of debt
and equity. If the debt-equity ratio is to remain at 2Ôü„3, the firm will need to increase eq-
uity by $60,000 and debt by $40,000. Since retained earnings already increase share-
holdersÔÇ™ equity by $36,000, the firm needs to issue an additional $24,000 of new equity
and $40,000 of debt.
Financial Planning 107

b. If dividends are frozen at $64,000 instead of increasing to $72,000 as envisioned in Table
1.15, then the required external funds fall by $8,000 to $56,000.

3 a. The company currently runs at 80 percent of capacity given the current level of fixed as-
sets. Sales can increase until the company is at 100 percent of capacity; therefore, sales
can increase to $60 million ├— (100/80) = $75 million.